The present invention relates generally to improvements in the field of communication systems, and more particularly to a wireless communication system and method capable of providing an innovative two-way paging service.
Both wireless paging services and wireless telephone services have gained popular acceptance over the years. One common advantage between the two services is that because they use a wireless medium, their subscribers gain greater mobility then the traditional wired communication services, such as the Plain Old Telephone Service or xe2x80x9cPOTSxe2x80x9d. On the other hand, the services differ in their respective communication capability and cost.
The one-way transmission capability of the traditional paging system is well-known in the art. A page subscriber typically carries a pager which is capable of receiving and displaying an incoming numeric or alphanumeric message. A person trying to reach the pager dials a telephone number corresponding to the pager. Upon hearing some prompting signal, the person will then enter, depending on the system capability, a numeric message using the touch-tone pad or speak a voice message to a service attendant. This message is then transmitted to the pager by the paging system. The message will typically contain the telephone number of where the person initiating the page can be reached within the next few minutes.
A major drawback of such a paging system is that it only provides a one-way communication. Therefore, upon receiving a page message on the pager, the paged person must use another communication device and service to reach the paging person. Since it is sometimes difficult for the paged person to get to a telephone to make a call back immediately, considerable telephone tag may result. In other words, situations occurs where two individuals periodically trying to contact one another and fail because the other person is unavailable.
While the use of wireless telephones with full two-way communication capability can alleviate much of the foregoing one-way limitation associated with paging devices, the cost of constructing a wireless telephone service is relatively expensive. In addition, the unlimited fully two-way communication capability of the wireless telephone may be more service than some potential paging subscribers either desire or are willing to pay for.
Furthermore, driven by the fact that many individuals, for a variety of reasons, subscribe to both services, attempts have been made to improve the integration of existing wireless telephone and paging services. A common way to meet this need has been to provide an end-user communication device that incorporates both the wireless telephone and paging circuities, while continuing to use a separate frequency spectrum and transmission equipment in the network for each service.
This approach, however, introduces yet other problems not encountered before. It is now known that due to the closeness of the two circuities in the end-user device, signal interference will occur if both services are active at the same time, resulting in degradation of both services. A common approach to resolving this problem has been to provide intelligent ways of communication between the paging equipment and the wireless telephone equipment so that one service knows when the other service is active and thereby refrains from transmitting, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,153,903, issued to Eastmond et al.
The fundamental problem with the present integration methods discussed above is that basically two infrastructures are still used to provide both services. Each service is still required to have its own separate circuitry for the end-user equipment, separate frequency spectrum for transmission, and separate equipment in the network even though the equipments may work better in tandem than before. This duplication of resources prevents any significant amount of cost saving when both services are being provided by a single vendor.
From the discussion above, there is a need therefore for a communication system capable of providing a medium level of service to fill the gap between the expensive, fully two-way wireless telephone service and the inflexible, less expensive, one-way paging service without the use of redundant infrastructure.
The present invention is a wireless telephone communication system and method capable of providing both the traditional two-way telephone service and a new two-way paging service, requiring only some modification to the current wireless infrastructure. Therefore, both services can be provided using the same network equipment, frequency spectrum and end-user communication devices.
One preferred embodiment of the present invention comprises a wireless telephone communication system capable of providing both a two-way telephone service and a two-way paging service using wireless terminals, comprising:
one or more base stations each serving a region and the wireless terminals located within the region;
a wireless switch connected to each of the base stations for call delivery from a calling party to a called party""s wireless terminal, said switch comprising
means for distinguishing whether the called party is a two-way telephone subscriber or a two-way paging subscriber;
means for providing a two-way telephone communication indefinitely between the calling party and the called party until one of the parties hangs up, when the called party is a two-way telephone subscriber; and
means for providing a two-way paging communication and determining if the length of the communication has exceeded a predetermined time period, when the called party is a two-way paging subscriber.
The above discussed features, as well as additional features and advantages of the present invention, will become apparent by reference to the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.